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It depends on the application. BBBs come in industrial variants (the Pis don't, so good luck using them in certain contexts), and have more UARTs, i2c and SPI buses, not to mention the PRUs...

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I guess... but if industrial is really their market, I think they need to up their game in terms of documentation. "Real" industrial embedded modules tend to come with reams of documentation covering almost down to the silicon. You pay for that, of course, because writing documentation costs money, but so is having your engineers spend time twiddling bits and poking at undocumented registers, trying to figure out why your sample code works and theirs doesn't.

That said, I've seen some neat shoestring-budget prototype projects done on BB hardware, so there's some market there. But it seems like their stuff is a bit expensive for low-end learners and hobbyists and missing some of the niceties you get if you convince your boss to buy a ComExpress-based industrial module, or (if you really twist their arm) something like the Arnouse BioDigital SBCs.

sure, there are better options, but we don't have "engineers" and instead "grad students" :).

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